


Into The Open

by clockworkrobots



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Coda, Erik Lehnsherr's Gay Socialist Farm Island, Happy Ending, M/M, X-Men: Dark Phoenix (Movie) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 05:33:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19192777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots/pseuds/clockworkrobots
Summary: After the end, Charles finds a new beginning.(Post-Dark Phoenix and follows directly from the last scene.)





	Into The Open

**Author's Note:**

> So though a large part of me wanted to change elements I didn't like from the plot (though I enjoyed the film over all I'm still fairly bitter over Raven), in the end I decided to keep it as it was because I really just wanted the full gay catharsis Charles and Erik deserved, continuing on from that absolutely perfect last scene. Love is real I guess??????? Incredible.
> 
> I _do_ kind of ignore Erik's Apocalypse storyline existed (because I want better for my baby), but I don't contradict it either, so believe what you want. This story is more about Charles' emotional journey anyway.

  


All it takes is for Charles to quietly move his cappuccino to the side for Erik to understand the opening for what it is.

He sets up the chess board upon the round table swiftly, though without any overt use of his powers—an unusual concession, Charles thinks, but it’s one he’s grateful for, nonetheless. He had chosen this café specifically for its utter banality, its nondescript menu and its polite but unassuming staff. He’s certainly had better coffee elsewhere in Paris, even in this same _arrondissement_ , but he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. No, a mediocre café in a city half-way around the world from New York is exactly what he needed to find his footing again, so to speak, after leaving everything he’d known behind.

Or, so he thought.

Erik Lehnsherr always did have a way of complicating things.

“So, when I win, I presume that means I get to choose where to have dinner?” Erik asks, setting up the last of his pawns in a neat, even row.  
  
Charles can’t help but offer a small laugh at that. “When _you_ win? Dear me, no,” Charles smiles, and makes the game’s first move. “No, when you _lose_ , I _may_ graciously allow you to suggest a venue,” he teases. Then, tilting his head in afterthought, adds, “Depending on their wine list, of course.”  
  
“Please, Charles, I wouldn't even dream of suggesting a restaurant with sub-par wine,” Erik frowns, as if genuinely affronted, though Charles can tell by the shine of his eyes and the amused buzzing in the background of his mind he’s certainly anything but. “Are you still favouring that ghastly ‘79 vintage, or has your palette evolved since our last dinner together?”

It had been three years ago, an impromptu meeting in London to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Charles hadn’t known that Erik would be there—perhaps he’d just assumed Erik would sooner be in Berlin tearing at the rebar himself. But no, there he was when Charles’ charity dinner had finished, tall and handsome as ever in a dark, long coat to brace against the winter wind.

“The '79 is perfectly lovely,” Charles sniffs, “I don’t know why you pretend it’s anything but.”  
  
Erik shakes his head as he moves his knight to capture a bishop. “It’s flavorless and smells acrid. But then so are most Pinot Noirs, so perhaps I shouldn’t hold it against the year.”  
  
Charles sighs in a feigned air of deep disappointment. He’s never had so much fun than when bickering with Erik the petty, trivial things. “I’d forgotten about your disdain for anything less than a twenty-year Merlot,” he scoffs, though the corners of his mouth twitch and betray him.  
  
Erik grins, knowing. “No, you didn’t,” he says.

Charles ducks his head to hide his flush.

No, the thinks, remembering stolen nights with red-stained lips. Indeed, he didn’t.

 

***

 

Dinner passes in that strange way that time with wine and beautiful men often does for Charles: both too fast and too slow and never with enough closeness. But he’s had decades to perfect what it is to be in Erik’s presence and not be able to touch whenever he wants. It was almost easier, in those brief few weeks as a young man before they finally gave in, when he didn’t know yet what it was like to taste him, to feel him against his skin. The heated looks and heavy weight that would fall over his chest whenever Erik stood too close in those early days were painful to endure in the moment but exciting, too, by the same measure, with all that they suggested and promised.

Now, the knowledge would almost be a burden if it wasn’t also the kind of memory he clung to the most desperately in his most lonely moments. It’s been _years_ since he’s touched Erik so intimately, but he still remembers as clearly as if it were yesterday, what it was like to feel the blood rush under his skin and wonder with awe if Erik’s power didn’t somehow include this impossible ability to make his heart leap forward in his chest.

No, knowing it and not being able to _have_ it is a special kind of torture.

“Charles,” Erik says, low and deep, pulling Charles out of his merlot-tinted reverie on the fineness of Erik’s jaw line.  
  
Charles hums appreciatively. He always did get embarrassingly indulgent when he drank red. 

“Erik,” he counters, keeping his voice steady as a queasy sort of anticipation coalesces in his stomach.

They’ve kept their dinner conversation safe until now. No politics, no talk of their pasts, just idle chatter about books and music and Erik’s passionate advocacy for the prodigal genius of Basquiat. But Charles knew it was only a matter of time before Erik got back to what he had asked earlier that day and that Charles had deftly avoided, too fresh still from leaving the school to think about where he might make his home next. Too raw from losing what, in all respects that mattered, had been his sister and his daughter. 

He knew he couldn’t stay there, that was never in question. Not without Raven, her loss an open wound on his soul that he fears might never heal. Not without Jean, who’s steady presence had been for so long his only family, until Raven had come back home to him.

The house meant nothing to him without the people he loved most in it, and though of course he still loves Hank and the other teachers and students dearly, he’d certainly succeeded in isolating himself from any sense of true closeness with them these last few years that he doesn’t know yet if it’s a relationship that can be repaired when their respective losses have also been so big. There might be a time, in the future, when they can all meet again on equal ground, but Charles won’t rush them. He owes them that. Perhaps he owes it to himself, too, to discover what it is to be less lonely.

Erik stares at him evenly across their table. Their meals have long been cleared, and it’s just the mostly-empty wine bottle left, though Charles knows it won’t be soon.

Even Erik’s neutral gaze was always magnetic, penetrating, and Charles could rarely find it in himself to look away. He looks at Charles and Charles feels exposed.

“I’m tired,” Erik tells him. It’s not accusing, but Charles can tell by set of his jaw that he is still searching for something. “You must be, too,” he adds, and then reaches across the table to tap a couple of his long, slender fingers against Charles’ own where they grip the bottom of his glass. It’s oddly tentative for a man normally so direct, and the shy sort of tenderness throws Charles for a moment. He doesn’t move his hand.

“So please,” Erik asks again. “Let me take you home.”  
  
Blood rushes loudly in his ears and Charles wonders if Erik can feel it, the way that such simple words undo him.

“Erik, I—”  
  
Erik’s eyes flash, expecting the fight and ready for it. “What are you afraid of?” he asks, “Me? After all this time, after everything?”  
  
Charles takes a deep breath. “I’ve never been afraid of you, my friend,” he says quietly, and it should sound preposterous, but it’s true. He thinks the honesty surprises both of them, by the way he can feel Erik’s mind start, and his throat bob.  
  
Erik peers at him, considering. “Well, I’ll admit there have been times where you should have been,” he says finally, meeting truth with truth. And more honest still, “That I wanted you to be.”  
  
Charles’ hand twitches where it still rests under Erik’s, and he spares a brief second of panic to wonder if anyone else in the restaurant is watching them despite having specifically chosen a secluded, private spot. Old habits die hard, he supposes, and old anxieties live forever. He breathes slowly, in and out, and remembers that being queer in 1992 is significantly different than how it was thirty years ago when he first met the man he’s been in love with ever since. The thought alone is a little overwhelming, how much things have changed, but not that. Never that.

“There were times I wished the same,” he says slowly, collecting himself. “I... I’ve been scared of what you might _do_ ,” he says, because he won’t lie. Even if there’s only one telepath between them, Erik would see right through the pointless pleasantry. “And... Of what you might think of me, even,” he chuckles self-deprecatingly, but his brow retains its characteristic furrow. Perhaps Raven was right when she accused him of vanity, though it was never quite what she thought. It was simply easier to bury himself in public duty than face the stark reality of being alone, without Erik, without—

He shakes his head. “But... You’re a good person Erik, I’ve always believed that. I’ve always _known_ that,” he impresses, because it’s been the point he’s needed Erik to understand the most since the day they met. He smiles ruefully and moves to retract his hand to his lap in shame. “I suppose I’ve been the most scared over the idea that I, however, am not.”  
  
And it’s there that Erik stops him. He grabs Charles’ hand before it can fall away beneath the table, out of reach. “Charles,” he says, with that curious accent mixed from all the places he’s been. Charles used to love trying to pick out the syllables and wonder where he picked up each one. He remembers lazy afternoons in the late summer when he would wonder over the way that Erik said his name, particularly when he could chase the sound with his own mouth. 

“You’re practically the definition of a modern saint,” Erik says with a small quirk at the corner of his lips. It’s both half mocking and half completely serious, a paradoxical combination only Erik could ever truly manage.

“Ah,” Charles says, pulling his hand back only to take a large sip of wine. The warm acidic burn swishes through him, and he likes it. “But you don’t believe in saints, do you, Erik?”

He sets his now-empty glass down and looks up to meet Erik’s open eyes.

“I’ve believed in you,” Erik says simply, and Charles’ heart stutters.

He wants to believe it—oh, does he want to. He wants to bury himself in Erik’s surprisingly kind words and forget how he does not deserve them. He wants to close the gap between them like he might have when he was young, so caught up in new discovery. He also wants to tell Erik to _fuck off_ , he wants to tell him that he’s _too late_ , that he needed to hear this a decade ago, or three, or…

He clenches his jaw, and closes his eyes. 

“Well,” he hears himself saying, “perhaps you did the right thing when you stopped.”  
  
Erik sits back in his chair abruptly, as if scalded. “You think I ever stopped?” he spits out, astonished that Charles should not _know_. His mind _buzzes_ , a tantalising, electric feeling at the edges of Charles’ own, but he won’t dive in, not until Erik asks. And yet, the temptation to dangles in front of him, ever sweet.

Distantly, Charles can feel their waiter resolve to come over to check on them. He quickly pushes the thought out of the man’s mind for now. He doesn’t know if this fragile peace could withstand any interruption, however slight.

He watches Erik shift in his chair. There is a distraught tension to his body that wasn’t there before, as if he’s deciding whether to get up in frustrated fury or melt away with exhaustion.  

“Charles, we’ve had our disagreements, our battles,” Erik begins. “But what always made me angriest was the knowledge that you were always the best of us, and yet you seemed so eager to throw that away, to condescend to the humans as if they could possibly match your kindness. No,” he shakes his head and holds up a hand before Charles can make his standard protest, “I know your old arguments. You can say humanity has compassion as generous and immense as you want. But Charles, it could never match yours.”

He places his elbows on the table, and leans closer, a commanding presence. “I'm not saying you're perfect,” he qualifies with a rueful twist to his mouth. “You're naïve, and arrogant, and far too stubborn. But you're _kind_. You forgave me for things that should never have been forgiven. Don't you see? I wanted a world that was—that was worthy of you.”  
  
It’s not what Charles expected to hear. He doesn’t know _what_ he expected, to be honest, or what he wanted, because both expectation and want have been his two most fallible instincts of late. Maybe they always were.

“Erik…”  
  
“And that's what I've been trying to build,” Erik continues, ignoring Charles’ inner turmoil—or perhaps inspired by it. “Let me show you.”  
  
“I—What would I even do once there?” Charles protests one last time, though it’s pathetically half-hearted. “I can’t imagine you want me teaching anyone, and I'm afraid I'm not good for much else.”

That much is honest. He really doesn’t know what to do with himself at all. The past few days he’s spent alone in Paris, while relaxing and pleasant, have not done much to prove to him he’s capable of being idle. What is he even good for if not teaching or being taught? He’s spent his entire life in some kind of school setting, whether furthering his own education or passing it on to others, and his brief stint as a secret agent aside, he’s never had a job outside of it.

Any further morose musings on his own worth however are interrupted by their waiter, finally freed from Charles’ psychic distraction.

He settles their cheque with the little French he has as Erik smirks on, always one to enjoy having a leg up on Charles where languages are concerned. (Charles has never been actually put out by this imbalance: he’s gratefully reaped the benefits of what it’s like to have Erik speak every language he knows into his skin.)

They emerge from the restaurant without saying much, except a few offerings of gratitude to the rest of the staff left to close off the night. It’s late now even by European standards, but the air outside is warm with the easy breeze of early summer. It might be proper for Charles to beg off now, wish Erik a goodnight and say that maybe he will have an answer for him in the morning. Maybe by the morning Erik will forget he asked, though even the most delusional part of Charles doubts it. Erik never forgets anything this important. 

But something in him can’t bring himself to turn away. It’s the same something that lead him to jump in the dark Miami water all those lifetimes ago. It’s the something he feels every time he looks at Erik and a warm, welcome ache coils in his gut.

He takes in Erik’s steady presence as he stands proud and tall next to him on the sidewalk, and Charles takes a moment to marvel yet again at the handsomeness of his silhouette. Maybe he should ask Erik back to his hotel room, instead. For old times sake.

In fact, the question is at the tip of his tongue when Erik begins walking. Charles hastily pushes his wheels forward to catch up, but Erik slows his gait to allow him to fall into sync with him without effort.

He looks at Charles, considering. “You don’t have to be _useful_ to earn your place there, you know. In Genosha. It’s built on communal effort, yes, but a mutant’s value is not weighed in such capitalist terms of toil and output.”  
  
Charles raises a flirtatious brow, feeling the weight of a dinner’s worth of fine wine and the even more intoxicating essence of being in the streets of Paris after dark with a beautiful man and all the delights of having his attention upon him.

“You’re sounding dangerously like a communist there, Mr. Lehnsherr,” he teases.  
  
“Oh,” Erik smiles, “I am all kinds of dangerous.”  
  
Charles laughs. He’s _missed_ this, how between them they could turn something dreadfully serious into something impossibly silly on a dime, and in a way only the other would understand.  

“That was terrible,” he admonishes, but there’s no bite to it. He’s still smiling.

In fact, he can’t remember the last time he smiled so much in one day.  
  
Erik smiles back, a secret one just for him. “It was, wasn't it? I _am_ out of practice,” he concedes with an amused tilt of his head. “The last time I had to talk a man into coming home with me I was significantly younger.”  
  
Charles chuckles, but quickly a paranoid sort of jealousy sinks in. He swallows thickly and looks away.

He watches as a typically fashionable Parisian couple walking on the other side of the street turn fast into a doorway, laughing as they take advantage of the alcove and its shadow to enjoy whatever privacy they were too impatient to wait for. Charles envies them, just a bit. Sometimes he fucking hates the fact that he’s been so patient, and so often about the wrong things.

Him and Erik, they rarely played chess with a proper clock, but perhaps they should have.

“Are you implying you no longer need to, because they are already at home?” he fishes. The blatant angle of his question should appall him, because what has Erik been _doing_ all this evening if not being entirely honest with him?

As ever, Erik sees right through the projected innocence of the question. “Please, Charles,” he scoffs, as if the idea wasn’t even worth speaking about. As if Charles would just read his mind whenever he fancied and must _know_. Which irks Charles a little bit, if he’s honest.  
  
“I wouldn't presume to know who you do or do not sleep with in Genosha,” he sniffs defensively.  
  
Erik shrugs in that subtle way of his that would be easy to miss if one wasn’t always entranced by the broad lines of his shoulders and had long memorised every angle and muscle that ripples beneath. “Why presume anything, when you could find out?” he says casually and taps his temple.  
  
Charles starts, wheels stopping abruptly in their tracks. Charles has never known anything as beautiful then feeling Erik’s mind at its freest and fullest, but he would never just transgress that barrier that Erik asked for long ago.

“Erik, you know I wouldn't just—”  
  
Erik sighs, and turns to him. “I'm _inviting_ you Charles,” he emphasises, and suddenly, with an overwhelming sense of wonder, Charles understands.

He touches the edges tentatively at first, but feeling the welcome give of Erik’s permission, dives right in. He forgets about being worried or jealous over what memory of other lovers he might see, because it’s only _him_ that gets to feel this, to know Erik this completely.

However, it’s not a memory that Erik opens to him, but a vision.  
  
There’s a bed, but Charles does not recognise it. He assumes it must be Erik’s by the neat set of the room around it, by the simple but elegant sheets spread out beneath him. And oh—there he is: it’s Charles himself. He’s panting and ruddy with overwhelmed arousal as Erik kisses down his chest, sucking at his nipples. He watches as dream-Erik devours him, envelops him, and pushes him into the bed as if he belongs there, because in this world he _does_. Erik’s naked back ripples with coiled intent, and Charles can feel Erik’s ravenous desire as if it were his own. Because it _is_ his own. He’s in Erik’s mind and looking down at the image of himself and through Erik’s eyes he sees nothing but someone worthy of love.  
  
It’s all too much. He reels back in his chair with a gasp. 

But back in the real world, Erik is there, too, standing solidly beside him.  
  
“I’ve been waiting a long time, old friend,” Erik says quietly. “I can wait longer, but I don’t want to. And I don’t think you want to, either.”

He’s right, of course. Of _course_ he is. He’s waited diligently for thirty years but he is so tired now, and so done with being alone. He’s lost more than he ever thought he could, and he doesn’t think he could bear losing this, the way Erik looks at him, the way his mind feels against his own. Erik reaches out to him and Charles, after a lifetime of giving himself over to ideals and causes and the expectations of a society that never knew quite what to do with him, he meets him halfway.

  
  
***

 

  
Charles had been proud of what they’d done with the school. Not just in terms of course design and student life, but the grounds had seen significant changes since Charles had stolen around them with Raven as a child, hiding from the cruel eyes of his step-brother and the cold indifference of his mother. Him and Hank and the rest of their colleagues had created world-class gardens and state of the art facilities. Not only was there a jet hanger beneath the basketball court, but the basketball court was pretty nice itself. There was a clear openness that Charles had always tried to foster and encourage, but within the bounds of a certain kind of ideal order. It was a sanctuary for young mutants in need of a place to grow, but it was also first and foremost a _school_. 

As a little girl, Jean had once called it too nice. He’d promised her at the time that that wasn’t the case at all, because how could anything be too nice for someone so special? But he’d forgotten that he’d once felt the same thing about the estate too, when he was that age. He’d never really liked the house as a child and had been eager to leave it and run off to Oxford as soon as him and Raven could manage. He’d tried his best over the years to erase the memories of a childhood marked by absence, but so much of his life after returning to the house had been marked by absence anyway. Erik leaving, Raven leaving. Alex and Sean and Moira leaving. His own absences, whether from alcoholic stupors or political soirées. Students, so bright and brilliant and full of promise, growing up and leaving to find their own way.

It had been his home for so long, but perhaps he’d also outgrown the place like so many of his charges. Perhaps it was _too nice_ for him after all.

Genosha, however, was something else.

The first thing Charles notices when Erik set his chair down is how _bright_ everything seems.

There is _colour_ , from the verdant leaves of the trees to the mosaic of multicoloured metal making up the buildings dotted among gardens full of every vegetable imaginable. Mutants mill about, either going about their daily tasks or simply enjoying the sunshine that washes over the whole of the main clearing. Charles can hear children laugh and something that might be music playing in the distance. It’s _life_ —life being lived without fear or repression or the burdens of history.

It’s magnificent.

He’d anticipated great things, of course, when he’d secured the land for Genosha from the president, but Erik seems to have surpassed him in imagination yet again.

“It’s…” Charles searches for the right words, but finds all his illustrious education has failed him.

Erik smiles, a similarly bright, free thing. “I quite agree,” he says, and leads him down the main path towards a building that stands off to the side from the central assortment of repurposed shipping containers. It looks somewhat like the front of a boat, Charles thinks, if one tilted their head and imagined it on water, but one completely refitted and transformed. This, he knows, even without reading a single mind around them, is Erik’s place.

“I must say, your instinct for domestic design is... Interesting,” Charles offers as they cross the threshold of the dwelling. He doesn’t mean it as an insult, only to say that it _is_ interesting: he’s fascinated by every detail, wondering where Erik found this piece of metal or that, wondering what he was thinking when he salvaged it. The work in even the most functional aspects of the building betray a care that Charles knows Erik puts into everything he wields, and this house is proof of that. This _home_.

As he wheels into the centre of the main room, he takes in the conscientiously low set furniture and thinks first that it must be awful on Erik’s back to always be bending down to cook or work on counters like that. Even the bed is low, and Charles thinks suddenly, with no short amount of wonder, that frankly everything about this room is perfect for the height of a wheelchair.

“Surprisingly accessible, I might add,” he says, trying to keep his voice nonchalant, but he’s not sure it he’s succeeding. He wheels around to face Erik, who takes a seat on the bed beside him. “Was that intentional?”  
  
The thing is, Charles isn’t sure if the answer matters. Whether by intent or mistake, everything about Erik’s little home in the middle of the sea is set just right for both of them. Right for Erik because it is his _own_ ; right for Charles because he fits inside it without force or trespass.

But… he still needs to _know_ the answer, because if Erik had made this, carved the wood and bent the metal with intent and care and always with the hope of having Charles here, it’s—

It means he’s been planning this for a very long time indeed. 

“You always did encourage us to have hope,” Erik says, reading the look of astonishment written plainly on Charles’ face.  
  
“I’m so sorry, my friend,” he chokes out, shame and guilt and _need_ bubbling up inside him. _How had he missed this?_ “What an idiot I have been.”  
  
Erik leans forward, elbows perched on the long jut of his thighs. “We’ve both been our fair share of foolish,” he says, and it’s too kind of a concession.  
  
“All this time, wasted,” Charles breathes out shakily. He clenches his hand around his knee in an effort to keep himself from falling apart completely. “All this—” Charles cuts himself off with frustrated breath, teeth clenched and shoulders drawn tight, inward. The burning guilt and regret threaten to bubble up and sear his throat with all that he wished he had said properly, when he still had time. When he still—

_Oh_ , when he still had anything.

He almost chokes and it comes out as a hollow laugh. “Erik, I've thought about you more than I've thought about anyone in my entire life,” he admits, feeling pathetic, drawn, horrifically human. “I've wanted—”  
  
Erik reaches over.

“I know,” he says, lifting Charles’ clenched hand to hold it in his own. Charles closes his eyes. He will never get over the feel of Erik’s hands, the way they hold such power and yet such capacity for absolute tenderness.

“I once told you that we wanted the same things, you and I,” Erik continues. Each word comes out laden with a swirl of emotions: Erik’s own regret, his own pain and anger and utter anguish. But he sends over his _happiness_ too, his relief and joys and the light of desire fanned within him every time he glances at Charles’ lips.

“I still believe that to be true,” he says and then he kisses him, and the world stops.

Charles closes his eyes and leans into it, his body remembering what to do before his brain catches up. He feels Erik’s large palm against his cheek and turns into its warmth greedily. It feels the same as it once did, and all the sense memories of those times come flooding back to him. It might scare anyone else, being held like this by a man whose hands have known such destruction and violence and death, but Charles knows intimately how they have also known such _care_. Hands that have made and remade and built him a home.

“I’m not who I was, back then,” he says, so quiet it’s barely about a whisper. He doesn’t move, however, because he doesn’t think he can. He can’t leave this again of his own volition, but he must offer Erik one last choice.

He still needs it to be about _choice_ , and not chance.  
  
“I’m not either,” Erik says softly in a voice that wills Charles to open his eyes, because it is the final affirmation that he needed. Erik’s own gaze meets him there, holding him as carefully as the curve of his palm. “But I rather think that should work in our favour, hm? Perhaps it wasn’t the equation that was faulty, but the variables.”  
  
“Are you—” Charles starts to break into a small smile, “—trying to seduce me with maths?”  
  
“Is it working?” Erik hums thoughtfully as he rubs a thumb across Charles’ cheek.  
  
Charles slides his own hand up Erik’s chest to the base of his neck, bared to him by the generous opening of Erik’s collar that seems to be constantly tempting him to taste. But all in good time. “Possibly,” he says, and falls forward, letting gravity do its most important work.  
  
Erik grins. “It's a start.”

Yes, Charles thinks, chasing the electric heat of Erik’s mouth.

Erik kisses like it is its own question, one too delicate or desperate to voice. Charles knows not what this question might be, but he doesn’t care as he kisses back, matching fervour with fervour and gasp with gasp. Either way he knows his answer:

_Yes._

 

***

 

> _Let us go into the open;_  
>  _Let us lodge among the henna shrubs._  
>  _Let us go early to the vineyards;_  
>  _Let us see if the vine has flowered,_  
>  _If its blossoms have opened,  
>  _ _If the pomegranates are in bloom.  
>  _ _There I will give my love to you._
> 
> _—_ _The Song of Songs_


End file.
